


A Star is Born

by frankiesin



Series: Say It With Neon [4]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ashley Frangipane: Pretty Odd Fucker, Backstory, Bandom - Freeform, Coming of Age, Fan Culture - Freeform, Fanfiction Ception, First concert, Gen, Mile Marker 17 Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-02-27 15:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13251585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankiesin/pseuds/frankiesin
Summary: Ashley Nicolette Frangipane has gone by many names, online and in real life. The most famous of these is Halsey. The first is a poorly chosen LiveJournal name made in the spring of 2007.(the Ashley/Halsey backstory in the mm17 universe)





	1. 2007

**Author's Note:**

> This is all fun and games because I got to make Halsey a Petekey. And I also got to relive some of my earliest fandom memories while writing this, because I got into fandoms around the same age that Ashley does in this fic. 
> 
> Also, I made her from San Jose, California instead of New Jersey on purpose. It will make sense later on in the universe, I promise.

**February 10, 2007; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley was twelve years old when _Infinity on High_ came out and her world changed forever. Her friend Jordan had recently gotten her into Fall Out Boy because he knew the album was coming out and he wanted a friend to go see them in concert with. Ashley had a bit of a crush on Jordan, so she'd agreed to listen to his new favourite band and see if she was into it. She liked _Cork Tree_ and the few singles she heard before IOH came out, but it wasn't until the album came out that Ashley truly understood the impact Fall Out Boy would have on her.

 

The lyrics were something else. Ashley headed to YouTube a few days after she and Jordan had listened to the album together in his room, and stumbled into a new world. LiveJournal, which Ashley had only heard rumours of before, was full of lyrics and theories about what the lyrics meant. There were fan theories in every direction, but many of them pointed towards a secret romance between Fall Out Boy's bassist and a guy named Mikey Way who also played bass. Ashley read the theories (called Petekey Theories) without knowing who Mikey Way was. She knew, after two hours of thorough research and an account that said she was born in 1984 instead of 1994, that Mikey Way and Fall Out Boy's bassist had been in love. And then the evil Alicia Simmons came in and broke the boys up and married Mikey Way.

 

Ashley also discovered fanfiction that fateful day. LiveJournal was full of it, and a lot of it was better than any book Ashley had ever read. A lot of it was about Pete Wentz (the bassist) and Mikey Way (the subject of _Infinity on High_ ). There was also a lot about Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump (the singer in Fall Out Boy), but Ashley wasn't as interested in that. She quickly learned that Petericks (the people that thought IOH was about Patrick Stump) and Petekeys (the people who knew IOH was about Mikey Way) were like the Montagues and the Capulets. They hated each other, and you couldn't be a real Fall Out Boy fan and read fanfiction for both pairings.

 

Ashley chose Petekey, because she knew what romance looked like and she'd read enough theories. People couldn't fake a heartbreak. Pete Wentz, despite being famous and hot and an emo god, was still a person. He'd been in love with Mikey Way, whoever he was, and Mikey had broken his little emo heart.

 

* * *

 

**February 11, 2007; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley decided to search Mikey Way on Google, to see who he was. It turned out he was in a band called My Chemical Romance. That band was angrier than Fall Out Boy, it seemed, but Ashley still liked their music. She followed a LiveJournal called the xXBlackDunParadeXx, who posted updates about My Chemical Romance, especially the Way brothers.

 

Ashley's own LiveJournal was called petekey_made_sense. It wasn't a great name, but Ashley was only twelve, and she'd never had any kind of social media before. She added xXBlackDunParadeXx to her follow list, and saved a few of his Mikey Way picspam pictures into a word document. She still shared her laptop with her mom and her two younger brothers, and she didn’t want them to see her saving a bunch of photos of a random guy. She didn’t know what her parents thought about gay people, but she knew that there were a lot of people out there who didn’t like gay people, and she didn’t want to get in trouble with anyone for having gay men saved onto her computer account.

 

So she made a document, titled it something along the lines of “cute!!” and put all of her favourite pictures of Mikey Way, the Fall Out Boy guys, and a few of Mikey Way’s brother in there. She even gave them captions, as though she was making her own picspam.

 

Picspams were important, because they were how a lot of new fans got to know the band members and their gay relationships with each other. xXBlackDUnParadeXx didn’t talk about the gayness in My Chemical Romance, or how Mikey Way was the reason _Infinity on High_ existed, but Ashley didn’t care. They had good pictures. That was all she, at the young age of twelve, really cared about.

 

* * *

 

**April 9, 2007; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley had some leftover Christmas money, which she used to buy a CD of _The Black Parade_ while she and her friends were downtown. She’d started following a lot of different LiveJournals, and picked up a lot of new bands to listen to over the past few months. There was My Chemical Romance, of course, and Paramore, who’s lead singer was a lesbian according to the internet, and then The Academy Is…, Panic! at the Disco, and Cobra Starship, all of whom were signed to Pete Wentz’s record label. There was also Gym Class Heroes, which was an awesome band because it was both emo, which was a white thing, and hip hop, which was not a white thing. Gym Class Heroes, like Ashley, was a mix of two very different things, and because of that, they were Ashley’s favourite baby band.

 

GCH wasn’t really a baby, but they, along with Paramore and a few other bands, were all signed to Pete Wentz’s label and so all the fans called them Pete’s baby bands. The guys in GCH were all around Pete Wentz’s age.

 

Ashley went home with both _the Black Parade_ and _the Papercut Chronicles_ , which was a GCH CD that people online had said was really good. Ashley didn’t want everyone at school to think she was trying to be an edgy white girl by listening only to emo bands, but she didn’t want to abandon who she was becoming online. Gym Class Heroes was the bridge between those two worlds, in ways that Fall Out Boy or any of the other new bands Ashley had discovered could never be.

 

When she got home, she put _the Black Parade_ on her CD player first, because she’d meant to buy that one. She asked her mom if she could borrow the computer, and after a few minutes of going back and forth, her mom agreed, so long as she kept her music down. Ashley pulled out her new headphones, also a Christmas present, and plugged them into her CD player. She set everything up, and then waited until her mom was out of the room before logging on.

 

Ashley was lying about her age on the internet. She was also talking to strangers now, but she wasn’t telling them anything real about herself. She’d admitted that she had two younger brothers and that she lived with her parents, but everyone online thought that she was sixteen going on seventeen, and that she’d only bumped her age up by two years instead of six. Ashley knew that no one online would want to be friends with her or talk to her if they knew she was in middle school. Besides, most of the fics she read and blogs she followed were run by people in high school anyway.

 

She’d found a LiveJournal called iam-clandestine just a few days ago, and after reading the most recent fanfiction, Ashley had scrolled all the way back to the beginning to read everything. iam-clandestine was an _awesome_ writer. She called herself Ry, and nothing else, and she wrote Pete Wentz and Fall Out Boy as though she was one of their best friends. Some of her earlier fanfictions were a little boring, or out of character, but she’d been posting consistently since the beginning of 2002, and some of her earlier works were tagged as Arma Angeles instead of Fall Out Boy.

 

Ry, iam-clandestine, was like a God in the bandom community. Everyone loved her, but no one knew who she was. She apparently had a private journal, that only her closest mutuals knew about, but no one could find it. She didn’t post much about her life outside of bandom on her LiveJournal, either, and there hadn’t been many updates since the summer of 2006. A lot of people had left iam-clandestine comments on her last fic asking her about her opinions on _Infinity on High_ , but she hadn’t answered any of them yet.

 

Ashley wondered if iam-clandestine had left bandom and RPF, or if she’d gone off to college and had too much of a real life to keep writing. It would make sense, since in one of her few personal posts from 2004 she’d mentioned that she had graduated high school, but Ashley didn’t understand why she couldn’t respond to any comments. All of the comments before the summer of 2006 had a response. Ashley had missed iam-clandestine entirely, and now there was no way of knowing if she’d ever come back.

 

Ashley had a short, half-finished fanfiction about Pete Wentz and Mikey Way sitting in her Documents folder on her mom’s laptop. She wanted to post it, to see if anyone would like it, but she was afraid that she was bad at writing and that if she posted anything that wasn’t a funny picspam on her LiveJournal, people would realise that she was just a twelve year old fangirl who’d only listened to one Fall Out Boy album in her life. She didn’t want to be outed as a fake fan. She didn’t want people like xXBlackDunParadeXx or iam-clandestine’s friends to laugh at her.

 

* * *

 

**April 27, 2007; San Jose, California.**

 

It was Patrick Stump’s birthday. Ashley made a cute mini picspam of him, filling the spaces between pictures with funny captions and jokes about his baseball caps. Ashley thought Patrick was cute, but she didn’t have a crush on him or anything.

 

Brendon Urie, the singer in Panic! at the Disco, however, was adorable as shit. Unfortunately for Ashley, he was completely gay, and he was dating one of the other members in his band. Brendon was kind of short, with pretty eyes and lips and dark brown hair that looked soft to the touch. He was also very handsy with the other members of his band, especially the bassist and the drummer, and all the fans knew that Brendon and the bassist were gay together. Some people thought that he was gay with the drummer, but Ashley didn’t see it.

 

She’d finished her first ever Petekey fanfiction, but she didn’t have a name for it yet, and she didn’t want to be boring and name it after anything on the album. Everyone did that for their first fanfiction, and Ashley didn’t want to blend into the background. She wanted to stand out.

 

She went back to iam-clandestine’s profile. Someone had put two of her fics on their FOB fic reclist. One fic was Petekey, of course, because that was what iam-clandestine was known for, and the other was Wentzley (Pete Wentz and Andy Hurley, the drummer in Fall Out Boy and in Arma Angelus). Ashley didn’t care about Wentzley, because Pete and Andy seemed more like friends than lovers, but she understood where iam-clandestine had been coming from. The Wentzley fic had been written before Mikey or Pete met each other, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to be dating then.

 

The Wentzley was called _To Find Our Own_ , and according to the summary given, it took place the summer after Pete Wentz graduated high school, and it was about him and Andy taking a trip across the country to find a purpose in their lives. Ashley’s untitled fic took place on Warped Tour, in the summer of 2005, and it was about Pete and Mikey realising that there was nothing wrong with loving another guy over the duration of the tour. The two summaries were similar, and after Ashley read iam-clandestine’s fic, she realised they kind of paralleled themselves.

 

Ashley’s English class had just gone over homages to other works in literature, and Ashley figured that this could be her homage to the late and great iam-clandestine. So she pulled up her fanfiction, copied it into a new journal post, and named it _To Keep Our Own (Pete/Mikey, a homage to @iam-clandestine’s work)_. She took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, and hit publish. Ashley hoped that no one would hate her work. She’d worked hard on it, and done all that she could to make Pete and Mikey seem like their real live selves.

 

* * *

 

**May 1, 2007; San Jose, California.**

 

_u kno u cant just copy someone else’s ideas and call them your own right_

 

_wow way to use iam-clandestine, a genuinely good writer who put in WAY more effort and time and consideration into her works than you ever did, as a way to make yourself seem cool_

 

_have u listened to anything fob did that wasn’t ioh?? bc u sound like a 13 girl who thinks she’s sooo cool because she listened to something that wasn’t britney spears once. mikey and pete would never act like that, and alicia bitch-mons is not that nice_

 

_you can’t drag urself into BNF status by using a BNF in the title of your shitty fic, u kno that right_

 

There were so many messages like that, with all of them bashing Ashley about anything and everything she could find. Ashley was trying not to cry, because she hadn’t wanted this to be bandom’s first impression of her as a fanfiction writer. She wanted them to be supportive and fun, the way everyone else was on fanfictions. And she couldn’t even brush it off and say that these people were all just Petericks and therefore haters, because a lot of them were familiar names. No, these were loyal iam-clandestine fans, who hated that Ashley had been inspired by their favourite author.

 

Ashley seriously considered just deleting her entire account and pretending none of this had happened. She didn’t, thought, and instead deleted all of the mean comments. There were only two nice ones. One was an anonymous comment, and the other was from xXBlackDunParadeXx. BDP’s comment was _ignore them. i dont usually read slash but this is really good for ur first fic. idk about mikeys characterisation but i mean neither of us have met him D: so who knows lol xD_

 

The anonymous one also made Ashley's day better, because she knew it wasn't just one of her few internet friends telling her she was good just to make her feel better. It was a real person with real opinions who didn't know shit about Ashley and probably didn't care enough to find out. It read: _people are jerks about anything. i doubt ry/iam-clandestine would care that u took inspiration from her stuff. she'd probably be honoured tbh. there are a lot of a-holes in fandom, but u probably knew that already. keep writing, and you'll end up with more positive reviews than negative! good luck!!_ Ashley didn't know who this person was, and she had no clue who they could be, but they were her favourite person now. xXBlackDunParadeXx was still pretty cool, but he wasn't some random person who swooped in to make Ashley not feel like crap for posting something she'd been proud of just two days ago.

 

* * *

 

**May 12, 2007; San Jose, California.**

 

There was a message waiting for Ashley when she checked the computer that evening. She was planning to ask her parents for her own laptop for her birthday, now that she was back to writing and was trying to be a better bandom writer. For now, though, she was stuck with her mom's laptop in the office. Her dad was the only other person home, but he was in the other room, reading and listening to his old records. He wasn't going to come in and bother Ashley and pester her about who she was talking to online.

 

The message was from xXBlackDunParadeXx. He and Ashley talked occasionally, but since he didn't do slash and Ashley was more into Fall Out Boy than My Chemical Romance, they didn't interact much on LiveJournal.

 

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: omg hav u seen iam-clandestine s post_

_petekey_made_sense: no should i_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: i thought u were a fangirls_

_petekey_made_sense: i guess but i don't want to bring that back up :/_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: just check it it's not bad everyone has been talking about it today_

_petekey_made_sense: damn i missed it i was at school_

 

Ashley didn't mention that she was at _middle school_ , because xXBlackDunParadeXx thought she was sixteen and in high school. He also didn't know where she lived, so she figured he'd assumed she was in a different timezone and that was why she hadn't seen the post yet.

 

Ashley opened up iam-clandestine’s LiveJournal and angrily tapped her feet together while she waited for it to load. Why was the wifi in her house so slow? She just wanted to know what had brought iam-clandestine back onto the internet after almost a year of absolutely nothing. She hoped that the writer was back with more, and that xXBlackDunParadeXx had gotten excited because he appreciated her craft even if he didn't care about the content. Maybe iam-clandestine had gotten published, like a real author, and was letting her old followers know that not only was she alive, she was thriving in the real world.

 

_hey guys._

_so most of you are probably wondering what happened to me. short story: i moved away, fell in love, and my dad died. long story isn't something i can share on the internet (at least not this part of it). i won't be writing any more fics sorry. irl life is just not compatible with fandom life at the moment and idk if it ever will be._

_thats not the point of my post. about a week ago an old bandom friend of mine messaged me saying that a lot of you guys were attacking someone on here because she name-dropped me on her first ever fic. first of all, if u think i give a shit about that i dont. second, pls understand that i wouldn't exist as iam-clandestine if it weren't for a bunch of shitty wentzley fics buried in my archives. everyone starts as a bad writer. bullying people for bad characterisation or being heavily influenced by another writer doesn't do anything but discourage people from trying._

_i know a bunch of u have discovered panic! since i disappeared, so to stay relevant i’ll use them as my example. most of rochelle’s lyrics come from other books. so if ur going to attack some random girl on the internet, u might as well attack ur fave female icon as well. just to be fair._

_-ry_

 

Ashley grinned at her computer screen. She copied all of Ry’s letter into a word document and then printed it out, because holy shit. Not only had she gotten a shoutout from her favourite fic author, but her favourite fic author had come back from an indefinite hiatus just to tell people to stop treating Ashley and other new writers like shit. _And_ she'd dared them all to attack Rochelle Ross if they were going to attack someone for being unoriginal. No one in bandom hated Rochelle, because she was awesome and relatable because she'd once been a huge Pete Wentz fangirl before her band got signed to his record label.

 

Ashley tlook the paper into her room and taped it up above her bed. She didn't know how she'd explain it to her parents if they asked, so hopefully they just wouldn't ask. But that paper was going to be Ashley's inspiration from here on out. She wasn't a Petekey writing powerhouse yet, but she was only twelve. It had taken iam-clandestine three years to become the most iconic early bandom writer. Ashley had time.

   



	2. 2008

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, you may have noticed that this is a multi-chapter fic now. I kept thinking about Halsey in this universe, and I wanted to write more about her and Josh because I like writing about fan culture from the late 2000s and I like their friendship. 
> 
> If you read this when it was a single chapter, then you don't need to read this chapter because it's just the second part of the original fic. I'm splitting up the parts by year, and because Halsey and Josh are fans, there will be a lot of MM17 spoilers if I post ahead of the actual fics. So, expect sporadic updates until WSYICT is finished.

**December 31, 2007; San Jose, California.**

 

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: ugh new years sux_

_petekey_made_sense: lol i like it why_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: o my family is like super christian so we don't do anything_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: they won't even let me listen to green day and im 18_

_petekey_made_sense: rnt u still in highschool my mom says that ur not an adult even in high school_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: ah man i was looking forward to the freedom_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: the good news is i now know a band signed to fbr_

_petekey_made_sense: omfg how???_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: i knew them b4 they wur famous so now i get free merch and good show tickets hopefully_

_petekey_made_sense: what band r they i need to listen b4 everyone else knows about them_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: ther called house of heroes and they were punk but now they're more pop punk i guess_

_petekey_made_sense: ooh ill check them out i have a laptop now btw_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: xmas present?_

_petekey_made_sense: yy. also can i kno ur name i don't want to keep calling u by ur screen name it's dumb_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: wow thanks but its josh_

_petekey_made_sense: im ashley jsyk_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: omg i have a sister named ashley and shes like the same age as u that's sick_

 

Ashley bit her lip. She felt bad about lying to Josh about her age, but at this point she had to. Everyone online who knew her thought she was seventeen and a junior in high school. Ashley hoped that she would be able to fix her lie eventually, but she didn't want to be thirteen when she did it. She wasn't a baby, but she knew that there were gross people out there who would use that knowledge to get close to Ashley and then do gross shit with her.

 

“Ash, what are you doing up in your room?” Ashley's dad asked from the door. “The ball's about to drop. You don't want to miss that, do you?”

 

“Sorry, I was writing and I lost track of time,” Ashley said. She typed out a goodbye to Josh, saying she had to go watch the ball drop in New York, and that she'd message him later, and then she closed her laptop and followed her dad down to the living room. Her mom and her two brothers were already on the couch, watching the countdown. Sevion was two years younger than her, in fifth grade, and Damian was four years younger than him. Damian was half asleep against their mom already, while Sevion was doing everything he could not to fall over.

 

Ashley sat down beside Sevion. “Are you tired  _already_? It's not even midnight.”

 

“Be nice to your brother, Ashley,” her mom said.

 

“Yeah, Ash, be nice to me,” Sevion said, because he was a bit of a little shit. “And I'm not tired. I'm excited. 2008 is going to be an awesome year, I can feel it.”

 

“I hope it's a good year for music, definitely,” Ashley said, nodding. She'd heard that Panic at the Disco was planning on putting an album out sometime in the spring, but they had been talking about a second album for almost two years now and everyone was starting to worry that the band had forgotten that they weren’t just five friends touring around for fun. They had an actual job, and Ashley hoped that they were doing it well. The whole band had turned into a bunch of hippies over the past year, and Ashley wasn't sure if she liked it. It was a dramatic change from their emo roots, but change wasn't always for the better. Sometimes changing things made them worse.

 

“Not everything is about music,” her dad said. He handed her and Sevion a mug of apple cider, which Ashley gladly took. Apple cider was the bomb dot com, and she didn't understand how people disliked it. Her dad sat down on the other side of Ashley's mom. “There's a lot out there, sweetheart. Don't limit yourself to one interest.”

 

* * *

 

**March 28, 2008; San Jose, California.**

 

“How do you like that album?” Ashley’s friend, Briana, asked. The two girls were hanging out at a skatepark and watching the boys roll around. Ashley wanted to go skate, but that wasn’t a thing girls did, especially girls like her who were half black and had pretty features. Skating was for guys and lesbians, and Ashley wasn’t a lesbian.

 

Ashley rolled her eyes, and paused  _Behind the Sea_. She’d been listening to Pretty. Odd. ever since it came out, and even though most of her other friends hated it, Ashley liked it. It was an album about love, and it reflected where the band members currently were. Rochelle and Jon were engaged to each other, and Dallon, Brendon, and Spencer were all dating each other and in love and breaking the rules of what was expected for rock stars. It made sense that their second album broke away from the angsty emo genre they’d become known for.

 

Besides, Panic! at the Disco wasn’t a bunch of teenagers any more, and they weren’t all running away from home. Ashley knew their stories now, and she knew why Fever was so angsty and angry.

 

“It’s a good album,” Ashley said, because she didn’t want to go into the details. One of the things she had learned was that coming off as a fangirl in real life wasn’t as fun as coming off as a fangirl online. Real life people tended to give Ashley weird looks when she talked about the members of Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco as though she knew them personally.

 

She crossed and uncrossed her ankles. “It matches the band, I guess. We can’t all be emo forever.”

 

“Not with that attitude, you can’t,” Briana said. She waved at one of the boys who was coming over towards them and then elbowed Ashley. “I’m gonna see if I can get a date with him. He’s cute. Have fun with your weird hippie music, I guess.”

 

“Have fun with your new boyfriend,” Ashley said back, and plugged her earbud back in. She didn’t care too much about boys. Sure, some of them were cute, but they weren’t like Pete Wentz or Brendon Urie or even Jon Walker. They had a lot of room for improvement, and since Ashley knew what guys could be like, her standards were a lot higher than her friends. Ashley would find a cute guy eventually, but she wasn’t in any rush.

 

* * *

 

**May 16, 2008; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley was jealous. Josh was seeing Panic in concert tomorrow, because he apparently lived out in Ohio, and Panic at the Disco cared more about Ohio than they did California. The band wasn’t going to come to San Jose until October, and Ashley would be fourteen by then. Luckily, she’d been able to convince her parents to get her tickets to the show, so she didn’t have to save up for it. It would be the best birthday present ever, but she didn’t want to have to wait so long.

 

_petekey_made_sense: its not fair bc ur not even a panic fan_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: dont worry ill film it and put some stuff on utube_

_petekey_made_sense: make sure u get mad as rabbits thats my fave_

_xXBlackDunParadeXx: why cant u just stay emo llike the rest of us now i have to listen to that song so i kno what it is_

_petekey_made_sense: we cant all be emo little shits_

 

“Ashley, get off your laptop and help your mom with dinner,” her dad said from the doorway. Ashley let her hair cover her face so that she could roll her eyes without her dad seeing, and told Josh that she had to go and she’d be back tomorrow for Panic updates.

 

“Who were you talking to on there?” her dad asked as they both headed downstairs. “You looked very intense.”

 

“Just a friend,” Ashley said.

 

Her dad raised his eyebrows. “Do your mom and I know this friend?”

 

“No,” Ashley said. She crossed her arms and looked up at her dad. “Dad. He’s not some creepy guy who’s trying to murder me or whatever. He’s from Ohio, and he’s in high school, and all we talk about is bands and music and sometimes clothes. He doesn’t know where I live, or anything about me other than my first name. And there are a lot of people named Ashley who like Panic at the Disco.”

 

“Just be careful,” her dad said. Ashley nodded, but internally, she was cringing. It wasn’t like Josh was a threat. He just liked the same bands that she did, and he was just as annoyed by bandom’s antics as Ashley was. They tended to talk trash about some of the other people on LiveJournal who were too invested in band members’ lives. There was one girl, closer to Josh’s age than Ashley’s, who constantly posted pics of Pete and Ashlee Simpson, and kept saying that Ashlee was pregnant with Pete’s kid. It was annoying and invasive.

 

Ashley knew where to draw the line. She never even considered harassing Mikey Way or Pete Wentz about their past relationships, and she left their wives alone entirely.

 

She smiled and nodded at her dad. “I will. I know what I’m doing.”

 

* * *

 

**October 11, 2008; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley was about to scream with excitement. She was only five rows back from the stage, and the Cab was finishing up their set. Panic at the Disco was up next, and Ashley was certain she could make it to the front row in time. She was small and good at pushing through people, and her dad had agreed to stay back for the show. He wasn’t as invested in Panic at the Disco as she was, and he was tall, too. He didn’t want to block anyone’s view.

 

The crowd cheered as the Cab finished their set and left the stage. The lights went down, and Ashley squeezed in between two people who were too busy talking to their friends to notice her. Four rows left. She still had time.

 

“Oh my God, I think I see them!” someone to Ashley’s right screamed. Ashley turned, whirling around to try and see if she could see the band herself. She’d seen Josh’s videos from back in May, so she knew what they all looked like now, and she knew what to look for. It would be different, and so much better, to see them in person.

 

“Brendon! I love you!” someone else screamed. Ashley didn’t know if they were a guy or a girl, but it didn’t matter. Brendon was bisexual, but he was also dating Dallon and Spencer. He was doubly taken, and the fans didn’t have a chance.

 

The lights came back on, and the screaming got louder. Ashley joined in, jumping up and down and managing to move forward again. Three rows. Now that the lights were up, she could see the band coming on, and she realised that Rochelle’s mic was right in front of her. Ashley screamed louder. It wasn’t that Rochelle was her favourite member, but Rochelle was a girl in a rock band, and she did something other than sing and look pretty, and she was super cool.

 

Rochelle walked on stage, with her hair flowing over her shoulders in gentle curls, and Ashley was close enough that she could see Rochelle’s bangs catching on her eyelashes. Ashley laughed. That was adorable, and it was a reminder that Rochelle was just like Ashley or any of the other fans, and she had awkward hair days as well.

 

“Hello, San Jose,” Brendon said. His voice was like molasses, and he looked amazing. His hair was soft and shining under the stage lights. Suddenly, Ashley understood why all of the other girls and guys wanted him. Brendon smiled at the crowd, and then winked over at Dallon, who was messing with their bass. “You look lovely tonight. Almost as lovely as our bass player, who’s too invested in their instrument to realise we’re starting.”

 

Dallon leaned in towards Jon’s mic, because they didn’t have one of their own for the show. “Hush, Brendon. I’m just working out the kinks.”

 

That, of course, was followed by Spencer making the ba-dump-shhh noise on his drums. Dallon bowed and backed away from the mic. Brendon shook his head, still smiling like the gorgeous man he was. “I apologise for my band members. But! Who here is ready for a night of music, wonder, and a whole lot of love?!”

 

The crowd screamed. Ashley tilted her head back and let out a howl of her own. She was pretty sure she imagined it, but for a moment, it seemed as though Rochelle had noticed her and was grinning at Ashley instead of the crowd at large. Ashley held onto that moment, pushing towards the barrier during the songs and singing along with as much energy as she could. She wanted Rochelle to notice her, and think she was cool, and more than just another fan in the crowd.

 

Ashley made it to the front right before Brendon started the opener for  _Mad as Rabbits_. It was the perfect timing, because now Ashley was right in front of her idol and inspiration, craning her neck to see Rochelle and singing up at her.

 

Rochelle grabbed a guitar pick off of her mic stand, grimacing a little as she got her hand caught in the flowers wound around the stand. She placed the new pick between her lips and tossed the old pick straight to Ashley. Ashley panicked and dropped it over the other side of the barrier, and then looked up at Rochelle Ross with a distressed look in her eyes. Rochelle put a finger up, mouthed  _one second_ , and went back to playing.

 

Ashley frowned. What the hell did that mean, one second? The song wasn’t over yet. She went back to singing along to the song, and cheered along with everyone else when it finished.

 

Brendon started talking again. While everyone else was paying attention to him, Ashley was still watching Rochelle. Rochelle took the pick she’d been using for the latter half of the song and crouched down towards Ashley. She adjusted her grip on her guitar and reached out, holding the pick out to Ashley like a peace offering.

 

Ashley, because she was a fourteen year old girl and was merely a foot away from one of her favourite people in the world, froze and just stared at Rochelle with a slightly open mouth.

 

“You dropped the last one, figured I’d give you a second chance,” Rochelle said. She was half yelling over all the other noise, and someone behind Ashley started screaming in excitement. The sudden raise in volume shocked Ashley out of her awe, and she reached up and took the pick from Rochelle’s hand. She physically touched Rochelle Ross of Panic at the Disco, and was holding a guitar pick that Rochelle had actually used.

 

Ashley closed her hand around the pick, certain she wouldn’t lose this one. She grinned up at Rochelle, not sure that this was real. “Thanks!”

 

“No problem! Thanks for coming,” Rochelle said, and waved at the people around Ashley as she stood back up to start the next song. Ashley grinned, squeezing her hand tightly so that she could feel the pick digging into her palm. There was nothing in the world that could ever beat this moment. Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed!


	3. 2009

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is the first chapter of ~new content~ and it's gonna get fandomy. Also, I roast the author of the milk fic a lot, because she's shitty and if you don't know why, literally just google infinity-on-dru and the receipts will come up. But yeah, I don't like the IRL Milk Fic, just like Josh and Ashley don't like the MM17 universe Milk Fic. 
> 
> Enjoy otherwise!

**July 29, 2009; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley was fourteen and her favourite band had just broken up. Her parents had gotten her tickets to see MCR next spring, and Ashley was excited but also heartbroken. Panic was in shambles, and Fall Out Boy was on an indefinite hiatus. Ashley still hadn’t seen Fall Out Boy, and now she was worried that she never would. 

 

The internet wasn’t helpful. There were theories about why Panic had broken up, but Ashley didn’t know if she believed any of them. She figured the split had something to do with the band’s relationships, but she didn’t think anyone had been secretly in love with someone else in the band. She shipped Jon and Spencer, but she knew that they wouldn’t ever be together in real life. There were people who thought that, and they concerned Ashley. She knew how to draw the line between fiction and reality. 

 

Josh agreed with her on that. He thought that shipping real life people who weren’t dating was weird. The two of them had gone back and forth about shipping discourse, but now they were pretty much on the same side. Ashley still wrote fanfiction because she liked doing it, but she didn’t ask the band members if they were in a relationship with each other or it they knew about fanfiction or shipping culture. 

 

Ashley and Josh both had dreams of meeting their musical idols, and Ashley didn’t want them to see her as just another crazy fangirl with no sense of respect. Josh just didn’t want the members of MCR or House of Heroes to think he wrote about them having sex with each other. 

 

There was an assumption that all fanfiction was porn. It wasn’t. Ashley liked the porn, because it was hot and well-written, but she also liked the fluff and the plot that came before the porn. She read fanfiction for the plot, and any porn that came with it was just a bonus. 

 

There was a new fanfiction on Ashley’s feed that day. It was Brallon, which wasn’t Ashley’s favourite ship, because no one ever wrote Brendon correctly in her opinion. The fic was written by someone who rubbed Ashley the wrong way, too, which she realised after she clicked on it. Josh thought Ashley didn’t like the writer because she was originally a Peterick and Ashley was a hardcore Petekey. Ashley knew it was more than that. Some of her Joncer friends were also Petericks, and Ashley didn’t have any issue with them. It was something else, but Ashley couldn’t figure it out. 

 

Ashley looked down at her screen again, and started reading. It hit her immediately. Dallon in this fic was being treated like a guy. Ashley didn’t really understand what it meant to be nonbinary, but she knew that that’s what Dallon was. They used neutral pronouns, and they didn’t consider themself a man or a woman. This author, who Ashley already didn’t like, was calling Dallon a man and ignoring that they’d said they weren’t one. 

 

_ petekey-made-sense: ok i figured out my issues with folieadru _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: she’s a peterick who slanders your kind? _

_ petekey-made-sense: no >:/ _

_ petekey-made-sense: she calls dallon a he and treats them like a guy even though they’ve said that they’re not _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: maybe she’s doing a genderbend? i kno thats a big thing in bandom and i keep seeing ppl draw frank and gerard as girls _

_ petekey-made-sense: its not tagged as a genderbend. i think dru’s just ignoring what dallon says they are _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: if she is, that’s shitty _

 

* * *

 

**October 1, 2009; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley was watching  _ Weekend at Pete Rose’s  _ for the fifth time in a row. She loved it. Dallon and Brendon looked great in it, and it was funny to imagine the two of them dragging Pete’s body around for a day. She had a Word document open as well, and had been writing a mini-fic for Pete/Brendon in between views. 

 

She didn’t ship Brendon and Pete, but there was a good following for it, and Ashley liked experimenting with the various band members. It wasn’t a great fanfiction, but Ashley wasn’t trying to be great. She wasn’t a Petedon writer, and she knew it. She’d learned from her first forays into bandom that trying to take over a ship never ended well. 

 

“Ashley!” her mom called from downstairs. “It’s time for school!”

 

“Shit,” Ashley said. She hadn’t realised what the time was. She slammed her laptop shut and shoved it back into her backpack before rushing into the bathroom and grabbing her makeup. Her hair was still short, and she pulled at it while looking for her eyeliner. She’d started wearing a lot more makeup now, because she kept ripping her hair out, and if she had more makeup on, no one noticed her hair. 

 

It wasn’t that Ashley hated her hair. She thought her hair was great. It was a really deep dark brown, and it got curly without turning into an actual afro. She couldn’t stop herself from grabbing at it. She could pinpoint where it started, because she remembered having long hair and messing with it constantly until it got tangled and she had to cut it out. 

 

At some point, it had turned into her pulling her hair out. It usually happened when she was nervous, or bored, or when she felt like everything was falling apart. Ashley was a messed up kid. She fit the emo label perfectly, but her parents hated that she wore all black and used a flatiron and wore a bunch of dark makeup. They didn’t understand her. She felt like her life was a rollercoaster. When she was up, it was awesome. She got so much done, and she was so creative and fun and everyone loved her. But when she was down, she was really down. 

 

She felt like she was coming down, but she couldn’t tell. Her hair was still okay, and she could cover the bald spots she’d made from her pulling with her curls. She was okay for now, but she wasn’t looking forward to the next few weeks. They’d be shit. 

 

She finished her makeup and tossed her eyeliner into her backpack as well. Sometimes she needed to redo her makeup at lunch, and it was always safer to bring her eyeliner pen with her. 

 

Ashley headed down to the end of the street to wait for the bus. There were two other guys there, but they were jocks and they didn’t talk to her much. Ashley was cool with that. She could see all of her friends in school anyway. She pulled out her iPod nano and scrolled down to Panic to listen to their songs. She missed them. Panic was awesome, and Ashley hated that they were gone for now. 

 

Ashley met up with her friends for lunch, and the four of them headed outside to their usual place. Ashley pulled out her laptop to work on fic while she and her friends ate and talked. She crossed her legs at the ankles and twirled a curl around her finger. “So, have you guys figured out your Halloween costumes yet?”

 

“Oh my God, it’s literally the first of October,” Drew said. He was the openly gay one of the friend group, even though Ashley was open about being bisexual. Drew acted like a gay person. Ashley just acted like Ashley. 

 

“And?” Ashley said. “Halloween’s awesome.”

 

“What if we all went as Kingdom Hearts characters?” Janelle asked. She was black, but she was super into anime and video games and she wore these huge, thick-rimmed glasses even though she didn’t need them. She’d been obsessed with the villains from Kingdom Hearts for months now. Janelle pointed to Ashley. “You could totally be Zexion if you dyed your hair blue and straightened it.”

 

“My parents would kill me if I did that,” Ashley said, but she kind of wanted to. She’d never dyed her hair before. She’d worn coloured extensions, back before she started pulling out her hair. “But if you buy me the supplies, I’ll totally do it.”

 

“Ash is ready to die for the cosplay,” Michelle said. Drew laughed and leaned over to high five her. It was decided that they’d go as the various characters. Drew would be Demyx, because of his bubbly personality, Janelle would be Xigbar, because he was her favourite, and Michelle would be Larxene, because she knew how to act bitchy. 

 

Ashley was excited. She’d never done a group Halloween costume. 

 

* * *

 

**October 19, 2009; San Jose, California.**

 

Ashley had the hair dye and the bleach. She’d convinced her dad that it wouldn’t be too permanent, even though she knew it would, and she was letting him tell her mom what would happen. She’d gone out to Party City and bought a Grim Reaper costume and a pair of fake metal chains. She’d sewn them onto the robe and added some tassels, and had found a book that would work for her prop. 

 

Ashley was ready. All she had left was the hair dye, and she didn’t want to do that until it was a few days before Halloween. She was excited, but she was also nervous about showing up at school with blue hair. She wasn’t a scene girl, and she didn’t want people to think that she was. 

 

_ xxblackdunparadexx: i see you’ve abandoned petekey _

_ petekey-made-sense: i didn’t abandon anything i just branched out _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: folieadru doesn’t think that _

_ petekey-made-sense: oh jesus christ not her again _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: she also posted a new brallon and uhhh…. its gross _

_ petekey-made-sense: omg u read a fic that wasn’t mine?? how bad is it _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: [link] just… just read it _

 

Ashley frowned and clicked the link. It was called  _ Milk _ , and it was tagged as NSFW. So Ashley checked the box saying that she was over eighteen, even though she wasn’t, and then started reading. 

 

She gagged. That was… Josh was right. There was no need to write about a milk enema, or make it so graphic and borderline rapey. Dallon clearly wasn’t enjoying themself, and Dru was still calling them a guy. Except now, in this fic, they were being called a fag too, because Dru had made them into humiliation. 

 

_ petekey-made-sense: oh. my. god.  _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: you finished it? that was fast _

_ petekey-made-sense: i couldnt finish it _

_ petekey-made-sense: how did she think that was ok??? like i kno that panic wouldn’t read fics about themselves but like… not only is she woobifying the shit out of dallon but like that’s not at all how brendon acts  _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: not to mention the whole enema followed by buttsex _

_ petekey-made-sense: THEY HAD SEX?!?!?!? _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: yep. after brendon lets the milk out, they go back to the bedroom and brendon rails dallon _

_ petekey-made-sense: ew _

_ petekey-made-sense: obvs i’ve never had buttsex but wouldn’t that be gross? since they probably didn’t get all the milk out? _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: probably _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: admittedly i’ve never had milk in my ass _

_ petekey-made-sense: pls dont ever do that _

 

Ashley sighed. The fic was out there now, and all future Panic fans would be able to read it. She didn’t like that. She didn’t like that all of Dru’s work relied on the bottom basically being a girl, but that she went out of her way to make sure everyone knew the characters were both boys and they were doing the nasty. 

 

Josh was questioning his sexuality. He’d started seeing a guy in Ohio, and on top of that he still had a celebrity crush on Colin Rigsby. He had a lot of issues with fanfiction because of how it treated gay men. Ashley wasn’t aware of all that, because there wasn’t a lot of femslash out there (there were a few Rochelle/Hayley and Rochelle/Linda fics, but Ashley didn’t read them). But if Josh had an issue with something, Ashley was willing to listen to him about it. He listened to her when she talked about being half black and bisexual. 

 

_ petekey-made-sense: should i make a post about it? _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: i mean you can, but she’ll probably flame you about it _

_ petekey-made-sense: this is one of those times where i wish that iam-clandestine was still around. she knew everything _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: do you think she’d write brallon or joncer? _

_ petekey-made-sense: idk but if she did it’d be really well done _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: i mean, ur not a bnf in panic the way you are in fob, and i don’t do fic /at all/ so idk if we should address it _

_ petekey-made-sense: someone should do it tho _

_ petekey-made-sense: i felt violated reading it and i wasn’t even the one getting milk up my ass _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: i just hate that she adds to the hypersexual gay man stereotype _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: we’re not all sex obsessed _

_ petekey-made-sense: i kno _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: not to change topics but do you have halloween plans yet? _

_ petekey-made-sense: yeah! a few friends and i are going as kingdom hearts characters _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: i’m going as a character from this new webcomic my bf introduced me to called homstuck _

_ petekey-made-sense: oohh so he’s ur bf now _

_ petekey-made-sense: ~official~ _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: yeah we’re going to a frat party together but probably not as a couple bc duh _

_ petekey-made-sense: mayb u should write a fic where colin and aj are frat bros who fall in love _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: absolutely not >( _

_ petekey-made-sense: hahahhahaha _

_ petekey-made-sense: colin acts like a frat boy sometimes _

_ xxblackdunparadexx: do not slander my boy like that _

_ petekey-made-sense: dont tell me what to do :P _

 

* * *

 

**October 31, 2009; San Jose, California.**

 

“Make sure to call us,” Ashley’s mom said as she followed Ashley through the house. Ashley was grabbing all of her things and trying not to touch her hair. It had turned out more blue that Zexion’s hair was supposed to be, but Ashley was okay with that. She’d straightened her hair and styled it so that the bald spots weren’t obvious, and she’d put on eyeliner just like she would for school. 

 

Ashley nodded to her mom and slid on her gloves. “I will, mom. I promise.”

 

“And don’t stay out past midnight,” she added. “I know it’s not a school night, but your father and I don’t want you to get hurt out there.”

 

“I’ll be careful,” Ashley said. She grabbed her book and her bag for candy, and headed to the front door. Her friends were there already, and Janelle had been ringing the doorbell. Ashley grinned at them and waved, and Drew said something about her being out of character. Ashley carefully flipped him off. “Hey. I don’t have to be in character yet. The night has barely started.”

 

“Your hair looks awesome,” Michelle said. She’d somehow gotten her hair to look like Larxene’s, and Ashley knew that she was going to spend a lot of time washing all the product out later. 

 

Ashley reached around to the back of her head and tugged. She subtly dropped the strands of hair onto the driveway. “Thanks. I didn’t realise it would be this blue though. I’m scared about school on Monday.”

 

Michelle waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. You look badass.”

 

Ashley grinned. Drew gave her a look, and she morphed her face into silent anger. The other three laughed and let Ashley’s dad take pictures of them even though he had no idea who they were dressed up as. Her dad was pretty cool. She’d never admit it, because all of her friends thought their parents sucked, but Ashley liked her dad. He was a little out of touch, but he tried to be supportive, and he let Ashley talk about music more now. He’d figured out that this was something she really loved, and not just a passing interest. 

 

Janelle lead the four of them through the neighbourhood. They got a bunch of candy and pretended to fight each other occasionally. Drew had his video camera and tried to make everyone act in character, even though Janelle was the only one who’d actually played Kingdom Hearts. Ashley shoved a Snickers bar into her mouth, and then Michelle made her read from her book. It was about the history of Russia, and she knew she was fucking up all the names. 

 

They got to the front of the neighbourhood and Michelle took Ashley’s hand in hers. Ashley looked down at her hands and then up at her friend. Michelle knew Ashley was bi; all of her friends did, because she’d known long enough that she was comfortable with people knowing as well. 

 

“Can we hold back?” Michelle asked. 

 

“Sure,” Ashley said, and slowed her pace. The two girls walked along in silence for a while, watching their friends role-play as their characters. Every once in a while, Janelle would break character long enough to correct Drew about something he’d said, and then they’d jump back into their acting. Ashley swung her and Michelle’s hands out. “I’m glad they’re enjoying themselves.”

 

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Michelle asked. 

 

“Yeah,” Ashley said. She grinned. “This is fun.”

 

“Can I make it more fun, maybe?” Michelle asked. She’d stopped moving. Ashley turned to look at her and nodded. Michelle let go of Ashley’s hand. “Don’t freak out.”

 

She leaned in and kissed Ashley. It wasn’t Ashley’s first kiss, but she could tell it was Michelle’s. Michelle missed Ashley’s mouth a little, and so Ashley had to reach out and turn her face so that they were really kissing. 

 

Michelle pulled back. “So. I like you.”

 

“I’m okay with that,” Ashley said. She leaned in and kissed Michelle’s cheek. “Are you going to ask me out now?”

 

“I thought you were going to do that,” Michelle said. 

 

“Okay,” Ashley said, and laughed. “Wanna be my girlfriend?”

 

“Yeah,” Michelle said back. She took Ashley’s hand again and kissed her on the cheek. Ashley couldn’t stop smiling. She had a girlfriend and blue hair. She was so cool now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading, and please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed!


End file.
